The Music of Hindostan c13.s1.8

c13.s1.8

All this is unlike Sanskrit. If we could imagine these syllables to occur in their poetry they would all be long by position—sōddēn grōūnd. ‘Nerveless, listless, dead’ would be altered to ‘nerveleh, listleh, dead’, the whole idea of the line being to run smoothly on as if it were one word, and not to aim at what we prize, the variety imported into it by the irregular stresses. Consequently rests are seldom written (except in order to break up the metre intentionally in a dramatic way) in any of their songs, at any rate not, as we should, on account of the words: